🎥 Tiesj Benoot explains bike-swap chaos and early Visma move: "Mathieu had too many teammates"

Sunday wasn't exactly Visma | Lease a Bike's lucky day in the Tour of Flanders. Tiesj Benoot was the team's top rider, finishing in fifteenth place, but even his race was not without issues. Afterward, the man from Ghent shared his story with IDLProCycling.com, among others.

"This is disappointing. I really had good legs," Benoot sighed. "On the second climb of the Oude Kwaremont, I was positioned a bit too far back, and after that I made a mistake. That's when my rear derailleur essentially broke, which I couldn't get fixed until Steenbeekdries. For example, I couldn't climb the Koppenberg on my smallest gear."

"Eventually, I still competed for the podium, but then I had a flat tire after the last climb up the Paterberg. That's when I finished on Tim van Dijke's bike, so I'm happy given it was a day of bad luck," said Benoot, who first got Dylan van Baarle's bike handed to him after that flat tire. However, it turned out not to be ideal, following which Van Dijke's bike was hauled off the roof of the Visma | Lease a Bike team car.

Benoot in survival mode on Koppenberg

All in all, the Belgian can live with the result. "A tremendously hard day, where we tried our best. Just before Berendries, our team made a really good move, but unfortunately, Mathieu van der Poel still had too many teammates to counter it. I don't know what happened to Matteo Jorgenson, but I assume he did everything he could. He must have ultimately hit his limit."

Benoot also experienced the Koppenberg. "For me, I was really in survival mode. I think I could have ridden to the top and even passed some riders who were on foot, but in the end, I also had to get off the bike. At the top, everyone came back together."